racial solidarity
Definition
Racial solidarity refers to a sense of shared commitment and collective responsibility among members of different marginalized groups to advance one another's social and political standing. It is conceptualized as a superordinate identity outcome, one that emerges when racially minoritized groups perceive themselves as similarly positioned within a social hierarchy and come to view collective challenges as a shared concern rather than separate group burdens. Shared discrimination appeals operate as one mechanism for activating this solidarity: making discrimination salient increases perceived similarity across racial groups, which in turn promotes cross-racial unity among Black, Latino, and Asian American communities. In survey experiments conducted three weeks before the 2024 U.S. presidential election, shared discrimination appeals increased solidarity uniformly across all three groups, and that solidarity subsequently mediated intentions to vote for a candidate perceived as advancing people of color interests.
Sources: Rogbeer & Pérez (2026)
Related Terms
- discrimination (1 shared article)
- inter-minority coalition (1 shared article)
- intended behavior (1 shared article)
- voting (1 shared article)
Applications
Racial Solidarity and Voting Intentions
Solidarity does not directly shift voting intentions but operates as a mediator between shared discrimination appeals and political behavior. Among nationally representative samples of Black, Latino, and Asian American adults, solidarity was indirectly associated with higher intentions to vote for both a generic people of color representative and Kamala Harris, with the mediated path showing good structural equation model fit.
Sources: Rogbeer & Pérez (2026)
Racial Solidarity and Shared Discrimination
Perceiving discrimination as shared across racially minoritized groups is a primary antecedent of solidarity. Experimental appeals that made shared discrimination salient increased solidarity uniformly across Black, Latino, and Asian American participants, though this effect did not translate into direct changes in voting behavior, pointing to solidarity as the operative psychological pathway rather than discrimination salience itself.
Sources: Rogbeer & Pérez (2026)
Racial Solidarity and Political Behavior
Research on racial solidarity has historically concentrated on intergroup attitudes and policy support, but electoral behavior represents a distinct and consequential downstream outcome. Solidarity's association with intentions to vote for Harris was significantly stronger among Latino and Asian Americans than among Black Americans, a divergence attributed to a partisan ceiling among Black voters whose support for Democratic candidates was already high.
Sources: Rogbeer & Pérez (2026)
